Quality evaluation of strawberries coated with water-in-oil based emulsion using an advanced electrostatic spray coating system.

In this study, the impact of formulated emulsion was studied on strawberries which were coated using dip and electrostatic spray coating methods. The coated strawberries were kept at room temperature for a period of 12 days. A significant level of chargeability of w/o emulsion was achieved in terms of charge-to-mass ratio of 2.81 mC/kg at an applied high voltage of 2.0 kV, applied air pressure of 0.3 MPa, and liquid flow rate of 33.6 ml/min. The distance of 170 mm from the nozzle tip to Faraday cage was maintained during the measurements. As compared to uncoated and dip coated strawberries, the water-in-oil based electrostatically charged sprays considerably (p < 0.05) reduced the weight loss, decay rate, pH, titrable acidity, TSS, and antioxidant activity. In both the cases, i.e. strawberries coated with dip and electrostatic spray coating methods, the same weight loss was observed, however, there was a considerably less weight loss as compared to uncoated samples. The textures of the uncoated (9.02 N) and dip coated (12.58 N) samples were significantly different from the electrostatic spray coated (15.85 N) samples. Since, the coating formulation had no impact on the sensory attributes, the samples were considered as acceptable at the end of the storage. Furthermore, compared to uncoated, water-in-oil based electrostatically charged spray coating was more effective at delaying the decay by 12 days.

Suraksha Chakra: A new scoring system to protect the healthcare workers from COVID.

Doctors, nurses, house cleaning staff and hospital ward attendants are at increased risk of acquiring coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) if there is a breach in the personal protection equipment. A new simple, easy to implement scoring system has been developed by our Suraksha Chakra team which can be used by the policy makers and hospital administrators. The scoring system is not to discourage anyone but constantly reinforce the healthcare workers for safe practices during patient care.

COVID-19-induced anxiety and protective behaviour among nursing students: A survey from western India.

Introduction: The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused anxiety and stress among people. Nursing students, being an important link in the delivery of health care services, are always exposed to stressful situations which in turn put a great toll on their mental health. Moreover, the perceived risk of pandemics motivates people to embrace different protective measures so as to reduce any potential threats of an emerging health concern. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the COVID-induced anxiety and protective behaviors among nursing students. Methods: Nursing students studying at 02 nursing institutes of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India were enrolled for the study. The data were collected using COVID-induced anxiety scale and protective behaviors towards COVID-19 Scale. These scales were converted to online google forms, and the link was circulated among 370 nursing students through emails and WhatsApp. A total of 229 students submitted their responses within stipulated time and were included in the final data analysis. Results: The response rate of the survey was 62%. Evidently, nursing students had a moderate level of anxiety (mean score 31.28 ± 5.29) due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Overall protective behavior mean score was 56.63 ± 6.4 which reflects that students were following higher quality of protective behaviors. There is a negative linear correlation between anxiety score and protective behavior score. Conclusion: The nursing students exhibited a moderate level of anxiety, and routing protective behaviors were frequently performed by these students. There is a timely need to plan and implement interventions for nursing students so as to make them self-capable to resolve psychosocial issues, especially during disease outbreaks.

Online learning in nursing students: Satisfaction and barriers.

BACKGROUND: The nationwide coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and ensuing lockdown has enforced institutions crosswise India to provisionally close to inhibit the spread of the virus and started online learning for students. To measure the level of satisfaction of nursing students with online learning and to identify the barriers which restrict to online learning. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The current study adopted quantitative research approach with an online survey research design and carried out during May-June 2020. Participants were selected through a web-based survey (Google form), in which 219 students enrolled. Self-structured questionnaire with the Likert scale was used to measure the level of satisfaction of nursing students with online learning and identify the barriers which restrict online learning. The descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis in which 219 participants were enrolled in the study of data with IBM SPSS version 20. RESULTS: Majority of student's participants 148 (67.57%) were extremely satisfied with online learning. The findings suggest that the highest barriers which restrict to online learning among nursing students is low voice and language clarity (2.16 ± 0.593), physical health barriers such as eye strain (2.43 ± 0.613), reliability and connectivity problem (2.26 ± 0.534). Among all demographic data, age is significantly associated with the level of satisfaction of online learning. CONCLUSIONS: The study data indicated that maximum students were extremely satisfied the with online learning and among barriers which effect online learning is low voice and language clarity, reliability and connectivity problem, physical health barriers such as eye strain.

Stress and Coping Strategies among Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Descriptive Assessment from Western Rajasthan.

BACKGROUND: Nursing is a very challenging profession, which requires very stringent training since initial years of nursing education. Throughout the training period, students are exposed to various stressful situations. Inability to cope up with varied stressors may lead to psychological distress and impede students' pursuits of nursing career. OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study is to assess stress and coping strategies among nursing students of Western Rajasthan. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred and twenty-one undergraduate nursing students were recruited for the study through total enumeration. Standardized Student Nurse Stress Index and brief cope scale were used to assess stress and coping strategies. RESULTS: Nearly 82.4% of the students reported moderate level of stress. Interface worries (mean score 17.88 ± 4.9) and academic load (mean score 17.6 ± 4.78) were the major source of perceived stress. Students considered attitude of other professionals toward nursing, lack of free time, and fear of examination as most likely reasons of their distress. Active coping was the most commonly used coping strategies. Level of stress was found to have significant association with the interest of students in nursing. CONCLUSIONS: Interface worries and academic-related concerns emerged as major source of stress. A positive trend was evident in the use of adaptive coping strategies over succumbing meekly. However, there is a great need to plan and implement stress management programs so that these budding health professionals could be better equipped and trained to face various challenges of the profession.

Overexpression of YKL-40 (CHI3L1 gene) in patient fluids may be a potential predictive marker for early detection of comorbidity in non-communicable disease.

Predictive biomarkers which can diagnose the onset of non-communicable diseases and the associated comorbid conditions are lacking for clinical utility. Highly sensitive and specific biomarkers for early disease detection and risk stratification may provide timely intervention to patients and prevent secondary complications. However, till the time patients are diagnosed, cellular events and biomolecules get active effecting multiple organs at the same time. This series of events lead to disruption in normal functioning of the organs and their coordinative crosstalk, hence, increase in mortality rate of patients. The primary functional molecules of inflammatory pathways are active in NCDs. YKL-40, an anti-apoptotic molecule in inflammatory pathways, is overexpressed in patient fluids in different organs under diseased conditions. We performed a preliminary network analysis to study YKL-40 co-expression with diagnostic markers: TNNT2/I3 (Cardiac Troponin T/I) for cardiovascular diseases, LCN2 (NGAL) and CKM (Creatinine kinase M-type) in acute kidney injury and HbA1c in type-2-diabetes. It is observed that YKL-40 is actively co-expressed and linked with standard diagnostic markers and may be influencing the pathways active in organ crosstalk. The pathways may be regulating the signaling events in patients with non-communicable diseases leading to comorbidities. We, hence, postulate that if YKL-40 and disease specific pathways influenced are clinically utilized, this will provide the foundation of establishing tailored and specific approach in diagnosis and monitoring non-communicable diseases and predict the onset of comorbid conditions due to phenomenon influencing organ cross talks.

Signaling States of a Short Blue-Light Photoreceptor Protein PpSB1-LOV Revealed from Crystal Structures and Solution NMR Spectroscopy.

Light-Oxygen-Voltage (LOV) domains represent the photo-responsive domains of various blue-light photoreceptor proteins and are widely distributed in plants, algae, fungi, and bacteria. Here, we report the dark-state crystal structure of PpSB1-LOV, a slow-reverting short LOV protein from Pseudomonas putida that is remarkably different from our previously published "fully light-adapted" structure [1]. A direct comparison of the two structures provides insight into the light-activated signaling mechanism. Major structural differences involve a~11Å movement of the C terminus in helix Jα, ~4Å movement of Hß-Iß loop, disruption of hydrogen bonds in the dimer interface, and a~29° rotation of chain-B relative to chain-A as compared to the light-state dimer. Both crystal structures and solution NMR data are suggestive of the key roles of a conserved glutamine Q116 and the N-cap region consisting of A'α-Aß loop and the A'α helix in controlling the light-activated conformational changes. The activation mechanism proposed here for the PpSB1-LOV supports a rotary switch mechanism and provides insights into the signal propagation mechanism in naturally existing and artificial LOV-based, two-component systems and regulators.

Conservation of dark recovery kinetic parameters and structural features in the pseudomonadaceae "short" light, oxygen, voltage (LOV) protein family: implications for the design of LOV-based optogenetic tools.

In bacteria and fungi, various light, oxygen, voltage (LOV) sensory systems that lack a fused effector domain but instead contain only short N- and C-terminal extensions flanking the LOV core exist. In the prokaryotic kingdom, this so-called "short" LOV protein family represents the third largest LOV photoreceptor family. This observation prompted us to study their distribution and phylogeny as well as their photochemical and structural properties in more detail. We recently described the slow and fast reverting "short" LOV proteins PpSB1-LOV and PpSB2-LOV from Pseudomonas putida KT2440 whose adduct state lifetimes varied by 3 orders of magnitude [Jentzsch, K., Wirtz, A., Circolone, F., Drepper, T., Losi, A., Gärtner, W., Jaeger, K. E., and Krauss, U. (2009) Biochemistry 48, 10321-10333]. We now present evidence of the conservation of similar fast and slow-reverting "short" LOV proteins in different Pseudomonas species. Truncation studies conducted with PpSB1-LOV and PpSB2-LOV suggested that the short N- and C-terminal extensions outside of the LOV core domain are essential for the structural integrity and folding of the two proteins. While circular dichroism and solution nuclear magnetic resonance experiments verify that the two short C-terminal extensions of PpSB1-LOV and PpSB2-LOV form independently folding helical structures in solution, bioinformatic analyses imply the formation of coiled coils of the respective structural elements in the context of the dimeric full-length proteins. Given their prototypic architecture, conserved in most more complex LOV photoreceptor systems, "short" LOV proteins could represent ideally suited building blocks for the design of genetically encoded photoswitches (i.e., LOV-based optogenetic tools).